Fertility Intentions and Maternal Healthcare Utilization During and After Pregnancy

Esha Chatterjee , University of Maryland
Christie Sennott, Purdue University

This study examined associations between fertility intentions and maternal health behaviours during and after pregnancy among a nationally representative sample of 3,343 women from India. Two waves (2005, 2012) of the India Human Development Survey were analyzed to investigate the influence of an unwanted birth on women’s use of antenatal care, safe delivery, and timely postnatal care using binary and ordered logistic regression and propensity score weighting. 60 per cent of births were unwanted. Regression results show that, net of maternal and household characteristics associated with fertility intentions and maternal health, women with unwanted births were less likely to obtain antenatal care and had fewer antenatal tests performed. Unwantedness was also associated with a lower likelihood of delivering in an institutional setting and obtaining timely postnatal care. The relationships between unwantedness and antenatal and postnatal care were robust to models accounting for selection bias.

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 Presented in Session 244. Disparities and Equity in Reproductive Health